英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

dottle [dottle 词源字典]: dottle: see dot
[dottle etymology, dottle origin, 英语词源]
double: double: [13] Double comes via Old French doble or duble from Latin duplus (direct source of English duple [16]). This was a compound adjective formed from duo ‘two’ and an Indo- European element *pl- which denoted ‘folding’ (it is present also in English fold and ply). The same semantic elements went to make up English twofold, and indeed duplex (see DUPLICATE), and also Greek diplous (source of English diploma and diplomat).

The underlying meaning of doublet ‘close-fitting jacket’ [14] (borrowed from French doublet, a derivative of double) is ‘something folded’, while doubloon [17], borrowed via French doublon from Spanish doblón (a derivative of doble ‘double’) was originally a gold coin worth ‘double’ a pistole.
=> diploma, diplomat, dub, duplicate, fold, ply
doubt: doubt: [13] English acquired the verb doubt from Old French doter or duter, a descendant of Latin dubitāre ‘waver, be uncertain’ (the b was reintroduced from the Latin spelling in the 15th century). Dubitāre was closely related to Latin dubius ‘uncertain’ (ultimate source of English dubious [16]), which appears to have been based on duo ‘two’, and thus to have meant originally ‘wavering between two possibilities’. In Old French, the sense ‘fear’ developed, and this was an important meaning of the word in Middle English; it survives in the derivative redoubtable [14], literally ‘fearable’.
=> dubious, redoubtable
douche: douche: see duct
dough: dough: [OE] Dough is an ancient word, with related forms scattered throughout the Indo- European languages. It goes back to an Indo- European base *dheigh-, which meant ‘mould, form, knead’, and produced Latin fingere ‘mould’ and figūra ‘figure’ (source between them of English effigy, faint, feign, fiction, figment, and figure), Sanskrit dih- ‘smear’, Gothic digan ‘mould, form’, Avestan (a dialect of Old Iranian) diz ‘mould, form’ (source of the last syllable of English paradise), and the Old English element *dig- ‘knead’, which forms the last syllable of lady.

It also produced the prehistoric Germanic *daigaz ‘something kneaded’, hence ‘dough’, whose modern Germanic descendants include German teig, Dutch deg, Swedish deg, Danish dej, and English dough. In northern areas dough used to be pronounced /duf/, which has given modern English the ‘plum duff’ [19].
=> dairy, duff, effigy, faint, fiction, figure, lady, paradise
doughty: doughty: [11] Doughty originally had the rather general sense ‘worthy, virtuous’ – ‘brave’ is a secondary specialization. It comes from late Old English dohtig, an unexplained variant of an earlier Old English dyhtig, which appears to have derived ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *duhtiz ‘ability, capacity’. This in turn came from a verb *dugan ‘be able or strong’, which itself came into Old English and survived dialectally until the 19th century as dow ‘be able to do something’ or ‘thrive’.
down: down: Effectively, English now has three distinct words down, but two of them are intimately related: for down ‘to or at a lower place’ [11] originally meant ‘from the hill’ – and the Old English word for hill in this instance was dūn. This may have been borrowed from an unrecorded Celtic word which some have viewed as the ultimate source also of dune [18] (borrowed by English from Middle Dutch dūne) and even of town.

Its usage is now largely restricted to the plural form, used as a geographical term for various ranges of hills (the application to the North and South Downs in southern England dates from at least the 15th century). The Old English phrase of dūne ‘from the hill’ had by the 10th century become merged into a single word, adūne, and broadened out semantically to ‘to a lower place, down’, and in the 11th century it started to lose its first syllable – hence down.

Its use as a preposition dates from the 16th century. (The history of down is closely paralleled in that of French à val, literally ‘to the valley’, which also came to be used for ‘down’; it is the source of French avaler ‘descend, swallow’, which played a part in the development of avalanche.) Down ‘feathers’ [14] was borrowed from Old Norse dúnn.
=> dune
dowry: dowry: [14] English acquired dowry via Anglo- Norman dowarie from Old French douaire (source of the originally synonymous but now little-used dower [14]). This in turn came from medieval Latin dōtārium, a derivative of Latin dōs ‘dowry’, which was related to dāre ‘give’ (source of English date, donate, etc). Its associated verb, dōtāre ‘endow’, is the ancestor of English endow.
=> date, donate, endow
dozen: dozen: [13] Dozen traces its ancestry back to the Latin word for ‘twelve’, duodecim. This was a compound formed from duo ‘two’ and decem ‘ten’. This gradually developed in the postclassical period via *dōdece to *doze, which, with the addition of the suffix -ēna, produced Old French dozeine, source of the English word.
=> duodenum
drab: drab: [16] Drab is a variant of the now obsolete form drap, which was borrowed from Old French drap ‘cloth’ (source also of English drape, draper, and trappings). It was originally a noun meaning ‘cloth’ in English too, but the beginnings of its transition to the modern English adjective meaning ‘faded and dull’ can be seen in the 17th century.

The word came to be used particularly for natural undyed cloth, of a dull yellowish-brown colour, and hence for the colour itself (an application best preserved in the olive-drab colour of American service uniforms). The figurative development to ‘dull and faded’ is a comparatively recent one, first recorded a little over a hundred years ago.
=> drape, trappings
drachma: drachma: see dram
draconian: draconian: [18] Draconian ‘excessively harsh’ is a monument to the severe code of laws drawn up in 621 BC by the Athenian statesman Draco. Its purpose was to banish inequities in the system which were leading at the time to rumblings and threats of rebellion among the common people, and to an extent it succeeded, but all it is now remembered for is its almost pathological harshness: the most trivial infraction was punished with death. When taxed with his laws’ severity, Draco is said to have replied ‘Small crimes deserve death, and for great crimes I know of no penalty severer’.
drag: drag: [14] Drag has two possible sources, each with equally plausible claims: Old English dragan, source of modern English draw, or the related Old Norse draga. Both go back to a common Germanic source. Of the modern colloquial applications of the word, ‘women’s clothes worn by men’ seems to have originated in 19th-century theatrical slang, in reference to the ‘dragging’ of a woman’s long skirts along the ground (an unusual sensation for someone used to wearing trousers).
=> draw
dragée: dragée: see dredge
dragoman: dragoman: [16] Dragoman ‘Arabic guide or interpreter’ comes via early modern French dragoman, Italian dragomano, medieval Greek dragómanos, early Arabic targumān, and Aramaic tūrgemānā from Akkadian targumānu ‘interpreter’, a derivative of the verb ragāmu ‘call’. It is one of the few English nouns ending in -man which forms its plural simply by adding -s (desman ‘small molelike animal’ is another).
dragon: dragon: [13] English acquired dragon via Old French dragon and Latin dracō from Greek drákōn. Originally the word signified simply ‘snake’, but over the centuries this ‘snake’ increased in size, and many terrifying mythical attributes (such as wings and the breathing of fire) came to be added to it, several of them latterly from Chinese sources. The Greek form is usually connected with words for ‘look at, glance, flash, gleam’, such as Greek drakein and Sanskrit darç, as if its underlying meaning were ‘creature that looks at you (with a deadly glance)’. Dragon is second time around for English as far as this word is concerned: it originally came by it in the Old English period, via Germanic, as drake. Dragoons [17] (an adaptation of French dragon) were originally mounted infantry, so called because they carried muskets nicknamed by the French dragon ‘fire-breather’.
=> dragoon, drake, rankle
drain: drain: [OE] The underlying meaning of drain seems to be ‘making dry’. It comes ultimately from *draug-, the same prehistoric Germanic base as produced English drought and dry, and in Old English it meant ‘strain through a cloth or similar porous medium’. There then follows a curious gap in the history of the word: there is no written record of its use between about 1000 AD and the end of the 14th century, and when it reemerged it began to give the first evidence of its main modern meaning ‘draw off a liquid’.
=> drought, dry
drake: drake: English has two words drake, but the older, ‘dragon’ [OE] (which comes via prehistoric West Germanic *drako from Latin dracō, source of English dragon), has now more or less disappeared from general use (it is still employed for a sort of fishing fly). Drake ‘male duck’ [13] probably goes back to (another) prehistoric West Germanic *drako, preserved also in the second element of German enterich ‘male duck’.
=> dragon
dram: dram: [15] Dram was borrowed from Old French drame or medieval Latin drama, which were variants respectively of dragme or dragma. Both came from drachma, the Latin version of Greek drakhmé. This was used in the Athens of classical times for both a measure of weight (hence the meaning of modern English dram) and a silver coin (hence modern Greek drakhmē), in English drachma [16].

It is thought to have originated in the notion of the ‘amount of coins that can be held in one hand’, and to have been formed from *drakh-, the base which also produced Greek drássesthai ‘grasp’. (Latin drachma is also the source of dirham [18], the name of the monetary unit used in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.)
=> dirham, drachma
drama: drama: [17] Etymologically, drama is simply ‘that which is done’ (in that respect it closely resembles act, which has the neutral, general meaning ‘do something’, as well as the more specific ‘perform on stage’). It comes via late Latin drāma from Greek drama, originally ‘deed, action’, and hence ‘play’. This was a derivative of the verb dran ‘do’, whose past participle was the ultimate source of English drastic [17].
=> drastic